This article will provide detailed info on how to set up a Share in GrownBy. You can view this video with the section on adding shares starting at minute 3:42.
What is a share?
Shares are products that are sold on a subscription basis. A popular example of share is a CSA “box” or “share” that is distributed on a weekly basis throughout a season. Farmers offer vegetable shares, fruit shares, egg shares, ice cream shares, compost pick-up shares, meat shares, and other creative options.
Each sale--either a one-time standard product or a share in GrownBy must be linked to a distribution location and schedule. So you'll need to have those set up first. See "Create Locations" and "Create Schedules" for info on how to do that first!
Understanding Share Types:
Primary Shares: These are the main offerings of the CSA. Any customer can buy it.
Add-on Shares: These shares are additions to the primary shares. Customers must buy a primary share in order to purchase an Add-on Share. For an Add-on and a Primary Share to be sold together the following must be true:
They must both be in the same CSA group
They must have overlapping availability dates, locations, and schedules:
Availability of Add-on share must match or be a subset of the Primary Share (Add-on share may start later than the Primary Share, but must share some days of overlap)
Schedules of Add-on must match the Primary Share. Customers are only given the choice of Add-ons shares that match the distribution location of the Primary Share that they’re purchasing on checkout.
Share Collection Template: A template allows a farmer to group some shares together. Shares under the same template will all show on the Distribution List (for harvesting/preparing shares) and the Sign in Sheet as the same. Templates must be created BEFORE creating the associated shares. Examples:
"Full Vegetable Share" is the template. You know that this has 8-10 items and feeds a family of a certain size. Within that template, the farmer creates a few options, such as: "Weekly Vegetable Share," "Bi-Weekly Group A Vegetable Share," "Bi-Weekly Group B Vegetable Share," "Monthly Vegetable Share." All of those shares would be the same size from the point of view of the farmer, so they'd harvest and pack the correct number of "Full Vegetable Shares." There may be another template for "Small Vegetable Share" with similarly corresponding shares nested within it.
Many farms are offering payment tiers and templates can streamline this. The template may be "Fruit Share" and within that template is "Fruit Share - High Income," "Fruit Share - Mid Income," and "Fruit Share - Low Income." On the sign in sheets, it will just show that each member has a fruit share, without saying the income level associated with the share.
Add a New Share:
Choose "Products" from the menu on the left and choose "Add New Product" and then "Subscription or CSA Share." Next,
GrownBy will offer you the options of Primary Shares, Add-On Shares, and Collection Share Templates.
Primary Shares - Basic Information
Note for template users: If you are using a template, check the box for "Use a template" under the photo area on the right before entering other information. If you are using a template, all of the basic information, except for Vacation Weeks, Production method, and CSA groups is included in the Template information. If you are using a template, you will additionally be asked to name "Farm Shop Product Name," which will be the name of this share as it appears in your shop.
Product Name
This is a public-facing name for the Share.
SKU
The SKU is a farmer-facing code for inventory management. We encourage you to read about best practices for creating and using SKUs. Like here or here or from this farmer. An example of a SKU is EggsWBK21 = “Eggs, Weekly, Brooklyn, 2021”
Short Description
Describe the share in short and descriptive language. Some good examples of short descriptions include: “Our Main Season Share," “For Omnivorous Households or Duos” (Smaller Share), “For Veggie-Loving Households” (Larger Share).
Long Description
The long description is the place where you should describe the share experience to the customer - from what they’ll receive to the number of boxes and when they’ll pick up. Some good details you might want to include in maybe the types of vegetables in the share, range of the number of items, general storage tips, suggestions on who this share is best for, or any info about pricing tiers.
Photos
You must include at least one photo of your share. You may add up to 5 photos. Horizontally oriented images work best. The recommended Aspect Ratio is 4:3 (ex. 1280x960). It is best to use photographs of your share, perhaps showing a few from different stages of the season. You can drag and drop or browse for images to add.
Production Method
This is a text description of your production method. You can add any text that you'd like, such as IPM, Pasture Raised, Rotational Grazing, No-till.
Category
Select a standard or create a new category for your CSA share. The category is only visible on the Farm Manager side for sorting shares on the product page. In your Farm Shop, this share will be shown as the CSA group.
Producer
If you produce the share, you can put your farm name here or leave it blank. If someone else produces this share, you should be clear about the name of that producer here.
Vacation Weeks
Vacation weeks are a very popular feature for consumers on GrownBy. For any share you can offer vacation weeks to customers. You can offer as many vacation weeks as you’d like. When a customer claims a vacation week, they will be given credit to your farm for a future purchase or invoice. If customers have installment payments configured, this credit will always be applied to the next invoice. Read more about vacation weeks here.
Select CSA Groups
Choose the CSA group where you’ll be distributing your Share. Currently, you may only select one CSA groups per share.
Suggested Family Size
Tell people how many people your share will generally feed in a week.
Minimum and Maximum Items
How many items do you include with your share each week?
Pickups and Inventory
Number of Pickups
This is where you enter the number of pickups/deliveries in the share. This is one of the key numbers that is used to determine the price of your share. The total share price is calculated by multiplying the number of pickups by the cost per pickup.
In Stock
This is where you put how many shares you have in stock. You can change this number easily at any time.
Billing Options
Read more about billing options, schedules, and proration here.
Pay in Full-Price Per Pickup
Price Per Pickup: This is the number that the total price is based on. You can choose a different price per pick up for different billing schedules, as you may find that you're more likely to have a failed credit card payment or other issue with installment billing where there are many more invoices. Setting a lower pay in full price may incentivize customers to choose to pay when they purchase their share. Certainly, you can use the same price per pick up for all installments.
Discount: This % is automatically generated by GrownBy as the price per pick up is compared to the other installment price per pickups.
Pickups: This is set by the field above where you have entered the number of pickups. You can only edit this by changing it above.
Total Price: This is the total price of the share over all of the installments, which is the number of pickups multiplied by the price per pickup.
You cannot turn off the option for customers to pay in full at this time.
Monthly
You may choose to allow customers to pay in monthly installments. If you do not want to allow this, toggle it off.
Price Per Pickup: This is the number that the total price is based on. See other details above.
Deposit: With most CSA programs, we believe it is important for farmers to be able to charge a certain amount upfront to cover the costs of running their farm and this amount may or may not be refundable depending on the policies of the farm. You can set the deposit to be any number that you want, up to the total price of the share. A zero dollar deposit is also allowed.
Last Installment Date: This is the date by which all payments must be made. This date will impact the number of total installments and price of each installment payment. You can use this to create the number of installments. For example, if you want your monthly subscribers to have 3 installments, you can set the final installment date to three months after the beginning of the share. Note that if you have a bi-weekly share, the first date of that share may not be the first date of your delivery season.
Discount: This % is automatically generated by GrownBy as the price per pick up is compared to the other installment price per pickups.
Pickups: This is set by the field above where you have entered the number of pickups.
Total Price: This is the total price of the share, which is the number of pickups multiplied by the price per pickup.
Monthly installments start on the first day of the month of the first distribution and continue on the first of the month until the final installment date. If the share is bought after the season has started, the billing occurs on the day of the month of the first purchase. You can read more about billing and proration here.
Weekly
Customers can be charged on a weekly basis. As a general note, it it important to know that GrownBy’s installment payments are just that - the total price of a share that is spread out over the course of the season. Even if a customer buys a bi-weekly or monthly share, if weekly payments are configured they will be charged on a weekly basis.
The fields of Pay Weekly are the same as the Pay Monthly section, described above.
Weekly charges are made on Mondays for as many weeks apply between the start of the season and the final payment date. If the share is bought after the season has started, the billing occurs on the day of the week of the first purchase. You can read more about billing and prorationhere.
Schedules
Schedule: Choose any of your schedules that you want to associate with this share. You can choose a seasonal or a year-round schedule. You can only associate a share with a schedule once.
Frequency: This is where you can set the frequency of the share, for example, daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly.
Start Date: This is the first date of the share. You can choose a date can after the first date of the schedule, but the start and end dates must be within the dates defined by the chosen schedule.
End Date: You can edit this to be the last date of the share. GrownBy will automatically use the number of pickups and the frequency of the share to make a calendar, so you may not find that it is necessary to edit this date.
Use the calendar as a way to double check the dates of the share. Any skip or exclusion dates that you have defined when creating the schedule should be reflected on this calendar.
Click on Submit to save your changes.
Add-On Shares
The information needed in Add-on shares is identical to the information in creating a primary share. Add-on shares will only be available to customers who have bought a primary share (it can either be in their cart at the moment or, if the shopper is logged in, in a past purchase).
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact support@grownby.app or schedule a time to talk with us here!
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